Silent Screams (23 page)

The wind took the barren black branches of the trees and swung them back and forth in a kind of mad dance, a tango of bad weather to come
.

They didn’t
know
they were being bad, these soft-eyed girls with their white hands and even whiter throats—little lambs, really, innocent white lambs with their trusting, open faces. They trusted him, and why shouldn’t they? He was there to save them, after all, to make sure their souls went up to heaven, instead of down
there
, that horrible place his mother kept talking about, where demons ate your flesh and you lived in eternal damnation.

He walked along the creek bed, stepping carefully on the stones so as not to get his feet wet. He tried to shut out the sound of his mother’s voice in his head, but it was to no avail.

Samuel! Sam-u-el! Are you listening to me? They’ll tear at your flesh, and you’ll be forever damned—trapped down there in eternal torment! And do you know what the worst thing of all will be? You’ll never get to see Jesus again! You’ll be eternally banished from His presence. Think about it, Samuel
. Never
to see Jesus again, never to look upon His divine presence!

He did think about it. It would be too bad, he supposed. But then again, it might be a kind of relief. Jesus’ eyes were so sad, so tormented. Samuel felt bad just looking at the carved figurine of Jesus, garishly painted blood dripping from His side, on the cross above his mother’s bed. It was as if Jesus were begging Samuel to come save Him from torment, but he couldn’t. He wanted to, but Jesus was already dead—they had already killed Him. And yet, somehow, here he was, hanging above his mother’s bed, his beautiful doelike eyes begging for mercy—begging him, Samuel, for deliverance, for release from his agony.

Well, Samuel couldn’t do anything about Jesus, but he could help those girls. He could release them, point them the way to eternal salvation.

He smiled. It had to be right, what he was doing, because it felt so good. He was delivering them from sin and temptation—and yes, evil.
Deliver us. Deliver us
. The words rang a tattoo in his head, rhythmic as a pulse. He sniffed at the air like a bird dog on a scent. The wind was blowing in from the river, carrying the smell of salt air and fossilized sea creatures.
Forgive us our trespasses
. Tonight he would get to work.

Sophia wanted a cigarette. She knew she shouldn’t smoke, but she desperately, dreadfully needed a cigarette. She sat at the desk in her dorm room trying to concentrate on the book in front of her:
Film Analysis
by R. L. Rutsky and Jeffrey Geiger.

Her mother had said she was crazy to think she could make a living working on “those Hollywood movies,” as she called them, but her father had glowed with pride when she was accepted into NYU as a film major.

“She has a talent, Loretta—you’ll see,” he had said to his wife, squeezing her to him, her round little body plump as a ripe peach.

“You should be glad she’s staying close to home,” he continued, looking out at the garden in front of their two-family house in Queens. “She’ll be able to come over for dinner.”

Sophia wished she were going away to college, but NYU was a really good school and she was grateful to be accepted into the film studies program there.

Now, sitting in her dorm room with most of her classmates asleep around her, she tried to concentrate on the book on her desk, but the words blurred and danced on the page in front of her. All she could think of was how much she longed for a cigarette.

Finally she gave up. Moving quietly so as not to disturb her sleeping roommate, she grabbed her pack of Marlboro Lights, pulled on her boots and overcoat, and slipped out of the room.

The fresh snow was silent and glistening in the street, soft and white and pristine, not sullied yet by the soot of engines and the pollution of the city. Sticking a cigarette in her mouth, she realized she’d forgotten her matches. She shivered, drew her coat tighter around her, and headed through the snow toward the deli on the corner of La Guardia Place.

The street was deserted, and the street lamps cast pools of light onto the softly falling snow. The flakes swirled and danced under the lights; caught up in the magic of the night, Sophia almost didn’t see the man standing in the shadows of the NYU dormitory building. Seeing her, he took a step toward her.

“Need a light?” His voice was soft, his face still half in shadow.

“Sure—thanks.”

It was the last thing she ever said.

When the phone rang at seven the next morning, Lee awoke instantly, the sharp stab of sound pulling him out of bed. He grabbed the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Lee, it’s Chuck.”

“Oh, God—another one?”

“Yeah.”

“Where is it this time?”

“Old St. Patrick’s. You know it?”

“On Mulberry?”

“Right.”

Old St. Patrick’s Cathedral was a beautiful landmark building nestled between Mott and Mulberry Streets, at the intersections of Chinatown and Little Italy. Lee had never been inside, but had walked past it countless times. It was a fifteen-minute walk from his apartment.

“I know where it is,” Lee said. “Jesus.”

“I’m on my way,” Chuck said, “but you’ll probably get there first.”

“Right. Any instructions?”

“No—just don’t let anyone move anything until I get there.”

“Right.”

Lee pulled on some clothes and hailed a cab in under five minutes. He was there in less than ten. He showed his ID to the uniformed cop on duty and went in the side door.

The scene at Old St. Patrick’s was depressingly familiar: the same group of investigators dispersed around the church, the same hushed voices and dimly lit interior. The early-morning rays of the rising sun crept tentatively through the circular stained-glass window at the back of the church.

Lee walked past the crime scene technicians, who were just unpacking their equipment, and approached the altar, to look upon the face of the latest victim. He steeled himself for the sight of her naked, mutilated body, but he couldn’t prepare himself for what he saw.

There, on the altar, lay the torso of a young woman. Her head was still attached, but that was all; her limbs had been severed, and were nowhere to be seen. On her dismembered torso were carved the words
On earth as it is in heaven
.

Lee absorbed this information in one terrible moment—then, turning away, he vomited. The members of the CSI team glanced at him, then continued with their work. This was obviously not the first time they had witnessed this reaction to a crime scene. Within seconds, a young woman from the CSI team headed toward him with a rag and a bucket, hastily gathered from the mop closet.

As she cleaned up after him, Lee forced himself to look at the victim. As he expected, she had the same short, curly dark hair as the others, though her skin was more of an olive hue. Her lips were fuller, her body—what there was of it—more womanly and developed. His head began to spin, and, fearing he was going to be sick again, Lee turned away.

“Sophia,” said a deep voice behind him. “Sophia Lo-Bianca.”

Lee turned to see Detective Florette approaching from the back of the church. Though without his usual jacket and tie, he wore a crisp white shirt, creased trousers, and polished brown loafers. Lee wondered if the man had a full-time valet.

“NYU student, film major,” Florette said, frowning.

Lee stared at him. “How did you get all that?”

Florette indicated a young man in a clerical collar sitting in the back pews of the church.

“Father Joseph. Knows her because she sings in the choir here.”

Florette looked down at Sophia—or what was left of her—and shook his dignified head.

“Nasty business. What do you make of this?”

Lee gritted his teeth, determined not to be sick again in front of the elegant detective. “I’ll know more once we find the rest of her.”

Florette laid a hand on his shoulder. “Come with me.”

Apprehension gathering in his churning stomach like a sour storm cloud, Lee followed the detective to the back of the church. There, underneath a stained-glass window depicting Death terrifying a group of people, he saw a leg. He looked around for a blood trail, but there was none. That meant either the Slasher had cleaned up, or she had stopped bleeding by the time he cut her up, which meant she was already long dead—thank God. He took a deep breath and looked at Florette.

“There’s more,” he said, and led Lee to the other side of the church, where, on the basement stairs, they found another leg—and then an arm, and finally, under a statue of Mary holding Jesus, the other arm.

Florette gave Lee a few moments to process what he had seen, and then he said, “Does it have significance—the placement, I mean?”

“I think it does, probably a religious significance, but I’m not equipped to interpret it.” He wished with all his heart Nelson were here—he would know what to make of all this. He was a lapsed Catholic, but he had absorbed all the symbolism and church history.

Lee looked over at the priest, still huddled in a corner pew. “Can he stick around for a while?”

“I’ll ask him,” Florette answered, and walked over to the priest.

Chuck arrived shortly afterward. When he saw what the Slasher had done to poor Sophia, his face grew crimson right up to the roots of his blond crew cut.

“Jesus,” he said. “Bastard,” he added through clenched teeth, though the epithet hardly seemed strong enough.

Lee and Florette filled him in on what they knew. Nelson wasn’t answering his phone, and Detective Butts was with his wife’s family out in the middle of New Jersey. There wasn’t much for them to do. The CSI team had things under control, as usual, and after interviewing the priest again, all they could do was watch as poor Sophia was processed and bagged, piece by piece, and taken off to the ME’s office. Lee noticed a smell in the air, something he couldn’t identify. It was sweet, and it lingered in his nose even after they left the church. It seemed somehow familiar, but maybe it was just the aftereffects of all the years of burning incense.

As they were leaving he remembered the last murder, and pulled aside a CSI technician, a young man with bad skin and neatly trimmed blond bangs.

“Test the communion wine for blood,” Lee instructed him.

The tech looked at him, puzzled. “Why would there be—”

“Just do it, okay?” Lee said.

“Christ,” Chuck said as they stood on the steps of the church watching the dark blue medical examiner’s van drive away. “We’ve got to catch this bastard.” He glanced at his watch. “I’ve got a meeting in half an hour—let’s meet this afternoon in my office.”

Lee went home and showered, then called Nelson, but he still wasn’t answering his phone.

That afternoon at Chuck’s office, none of them looked well rested, having been awakened by the early morning summons. Butts had driven in straight from his in-laws’ place, and looked as ragged as the rest of them. Nelson was still unreachable, so they started without him.

“Is there any news from New Jersey?” Chuck asked Lee, taking usual his seat behind his desk.

“I spoke with the state troopers in Somerville this morning. They processed the car thoroughly, but the only prints they found were from the doctor and his family. The only thing they have is the footprints in the snow.”

Chuck frowned. “Without a suspect in custody, they’re worthless. And I chewed out the cop who was supposed to be tailing you that night—turns out he had a family emergency, but that’s still no excuse.”

“What’s this all about?” Butts asked.

Chuck filled him and Florette in on Lee’s wild car chase.

“We think there might be a connection,” he added.

Frowning, Florette cocked his head to one side. “According to your profile, that doesn’t sound at all like this guy.”

“I know,” Lee agreed. “That what’s so disturbing about it.”

Butts’s homely face crinkled in concern. “Do you think you oughta be—I mean, maybe you should—”

“Look, we can talk about that later, okay?” Lee interrupted. “Right now, let’s deal with what we do know, okay?”

“Okay,” Chuck said. “What do you make of this new twist?”

Lee frowned. He wished Nelson were here to help him.

“I suspect there’s a significance to the placement of the body parts, but I don’t know enough to explain that. I do think he’s—”

“—becoming more confident,” Florette finished for him.

“Yes, that’s true—but he could also be unraveling. Some serial killers fall apart after a while. The strain of being chased gets to them, and they become sloppy and reckless. Bundy fell apart completely at the end, butchering several residents of a sorority house and leaving behind all kinds of evidence, including an eyewitness who survived. And Gacy began to break down after being conspicuously trailed by the police for a week.”

“So that’s good, right?” Butts said.

“Not necessarily. It also makes him more dangerous, more unpredictable.”

“So what now?” said Chuck.

“Well,” Lee answered, “we have to hope that he’s getting overconfident.”

“Pride cometh before a fall,” Florette murmured.

“Something like that,” Lee agreed. He looked out the window at the sunless sky.

As he walked from the subway to his apartment, Lee’s cell phone rang. The Caller ID said Fiona. That was odd—she hated cell phones, and never called him on his.

“Hello?”

“Lee?” His mother sounded upset—her voice was shaky.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s Groucho. He’s…” Her voice shook, and he could hear a muffled sob.

“What happened?”

“I don’t know. I couldn’t find him last night, and today I found him underneath the willow tree.” Another muffled sob, and then she came back on the line. “I don’t know if I’m imagining things, but I think he was poisoned.”

“Have Stan take him to the vet for an autopsy.”

“Am I being silly? I know he’s just a cat, but—”

“No, you’re not being silly! How’s Kylie taking it?”

“She’s very upset. She’s with her father today.”

“Okay. Now listen carefully. You call Stan and have him take Groucho to the vet for an autopsy—and let me know the results, okay? Then you go immediately to George’s and stay there.”

“But—”

“Please! Do as I say—for God’s sake!”

“All right,” she answered meekly.

“I’ll call you in an hour to see if everything went all right. And for God’s sake let the police escort know where you’re going in case you get separated, will you?”

“Yes, dear. What do you think…?”

“I don’t know. But please don’t take any chances.”

“I won’t. I’ll be all right. Stan’s here with me.”

“Good—keep him with you.” The more people he could surround his family with, the safer they would be.

I’ll take Manhattan
…

The Slasher, whoever he was, didn’t make empty threats.